“I’m not sure I want one,” I said, an edge creeping into my voice. On an intellectual level, I understood that Rebecca had spent her whole life living in her sister’s shadow, that Emily’s death had wrecked her, that she’d felt some kind of sick responsibility to her dead sister to say nothing about Skye’s plot against me. But on a more visceral level: I could have died.
“You’re not still holding a little grudge about all of that, are you?” Thea Calligaris asked, claiming the seat that Rebecca had left open.
“Little grudge?” I repeated. The last time I’d been this close to Thea, she had admitted to setting me up to attend my debut in Texas society dressed like a dead girl. “You play mind games. And Rebecca almost got me killed!”
“What can I say?” Thea let her fingertips brush Rebecca’s. “We’re complicated girls.”
There was something deliberate about those words, that brush of skin. Rebecca looked at Thea, looked at their hands—and then curled her fingers toward her palm and placed her hand in her lap.
Thea kept her eyes on Rebecca’s for three long seconds, then turned back to me. “Besides,” she said pertly, “I thought this was supposed to be a private lunch.”
Private. Just Rebecca and Thea and Xander, the three of whom—last I’d checked—were barely on speaking terms with one another for complicated reasons involving, as Xander liked to say, star-crossed love, fake dating, and tragedy.
“What am I missing here?” I asked Xander. The notebook. The way he’d dodged my question about Toby. The “thing” Rebecca had come to help him with. And now Thea.
Xander saved himself from having to answer by jamming the rest of the cookie into his mouth.
“Well?” I prompted as he chewed.
“Emily’s birthday is on Friday,” Rebecca said suddenly. Her voice was quiet, but what she’d just said sucked the oxygen from the room.
“There’s a memorial fundraiser,” Thea added, staring me down. “Xander, Rebecca, and I scheduled this private lunch to iron out some plans.”
I wasn’t sure I believed her, but either way, that was clearly my cue to leave.
CHAPTER 6
Trying to talk to Xander had been a bust. I’d gotten as far as I could reading about the fire. What next? I thought, walking down a long corridor toward my locker. Talk to someone who knew Toby? Skye was out, for obvious reasons. I didn’t trust Zara, either. Who did that leave? Nash, maybe? He would have been about five when Toby disappeared. Nan. Maybe the Laughlins. Rebecca’s grandparents ran the Hawthorne estate and had for years. Who is Jameson talking to? What’s his lead?
Frustrated, I pulled out my phone and shot off a text to Max. I didn’t really expect a reply, because my best friend had been on technological lockdown ever since my windfall—and the accompanying attention from the press—had ruined her life. But even with the guilt I was carrying about what my instant fame had done to Max, texting her made me feel a little less alone. I tried to imagine what she would tell me if she were here, but all I came up with was a string of fake curse words—and strict orders not to get myself killed.
“Did you see the news?” I heard a girl down the hallway ask in a hushed voice as I stopped in front of my locker. “About her father?”
Gritting my teeth, I tuned out the sounds of the gossip mill. I opened my locker—and a picture of Ricky Grambs stared back at me. It must have been cut out of an article, because there was a headline above the photograph: I Just Want to Talk to My Daughter.
Rage simmered in the pit of my stomach—rage that my deadbeat of a father would have dared to talk to the press, rage that someone had taped this article to the back of my locker door. I looked around to see if the perpetrator would make themselves known. Heights Country Day lockers were made of wood and didn’t have locks. It was a subtle way of saying, People like us don’t steal. What need was there for security among the elite?
As Max would say, Bullship. Anyone could have accessed my locker, but no one in the hallway was watching my reaction now. I turned back to tear the picture down, and that was when I noticed that whoever had taped it up had also papered the bottom of my locker with scraps of bloodred paper.
Not scraps, I realized, picking one up. Comments. For the past three weeks, I’d done a good job at staying offline, avoiding what internet commenters were saying about me. To some people, you’ll be Cinderella, Oren had told me when I first inherited. To others, Marie Antoinette.
In all caps, the comment in my hand read, SOMEONE NEEDS TO TEACH THAT STUCK-UP BITCH A LESSON. I should have stopped there, but I didn’t. My hand shook slightly as I picked up the next comment. When will this SLUT die? There were dozens more, some of them graphic.
One commenter had just posted a photo: my face, with a target photoshopped over it, like I’d been caught in the sight of a gun.
“This was almost certainly just a bored teenager pushing boundaries,” Oren told me as we arrived back at Hawthorne House that afternoon.
“But the comments…” I swallowed, some of the threats still emblazoned on my brain. “They’re real?”
“And nothing you need to worry about,” Oren assured me. “My team keeps tabs on these things. All threats are documented and assessed. Of the hundred or so worst offenders, there are only two or three to date that merit watching.”
I tried not to get hung up on the numbers. “What do you mean, watching?”
“Unless I’m mistaken,” a cool, even voice said, “he’s referring to the List.”
I looked up to see Grayson standing a few feet away, wearing a dark suit, his expression impossible to read but for a line of tension in his jaw.
“What list?” I said, trying not to pay too much attention to his jawline.
“Do you want to show her?” Grayson asked Oren calmly. “Or should I?”
I’d heard that Hawthorne House was more secure than the White House. I’d seen Oren’s men. I knew that no one got onto the estate without a deep background check and that there was an extensive monitoring system. But there was a difference between knowing that objectively and seeing it. The surveillance room was lined with monitors. Most of the security footage was focused on the perimeter and the gates, but there were a handful of monitors that flashed through the corridors of Hawthorne House, one by one.
“Eli.” Oren spoke, and one of the guards who was monitoring the feeds stood. He looked to be in his twenties, with a military-style haircut, several scars, and vibrant blue eyes ringed with amber around the pupil. “Avery,” Oren said, “meet Eli. He’ll be shadowing you at school, at least until I’ve completed a full assessment of the locker situation. He’s the youngest member of our team, so he’ll blend better than the rest of us would.”
Eli looked military. He looked like a bodyguard. He did not look like he would blend at my high school. “I thought you weren’t concerned about my locker,” I told Oren.
My head of security met my eyes. “I’m not.” But he also wasn’t taking any chances.
“What, precisely,” Grayson said, coming up behind me, “happened at your locker?”